Base training

So prep phase finished and I'm getting onto some real training at last. This wasn't the original plan, but the tough winter in the UK and work seem to have kept my training volume lower than I had anticipated through February.

Fortunately, I'm off to Lanza again on Friday. Hooray! Plus Jerzy - www.kasemier.eu - another Timex pro will be out there at the same time so that'll be good. Also the first week is the Serpie tri camp too. Lots of familiar faces riding round the island :)

Last month also saw a trip to New York for the Timex Multisport Camp at the NY Giants facility (the Timex Performance Centre) which was AWESOME. Great time had. Amazing group of people. Learnt lots, good to have some team environment time too. Ironman training can be a little solitary a lot of the time.

Spent an afternoon at Runners Need last week in Victoria with the TIMEX UK team. Nice to see those guys. Got a VO2 max test done while I was there too - see photo - and the score wasn't too bad for the second day of base.

That's enough of a brief catch up. Will try to blog more often from now on! Photos from the sun up next.... roll on friday!

Hot hot hot

Its 9pm and its still near 34 degrees. Luckily I've been on a couple of fairly light training days with lots of pool work (my back is now markedly browner than my front... must do more backstroke!). The weather's set to break tonight sometime - just in time for a hard brick session tomorrow. Think I'm fully recovered from Epic... had a pretty standard week last week, only dropping a little of usual intensity and lowering the run load. Last couple of days have been fairly light so feeling refreshed and ready for the next round.

Happy Christmas!

Made it back to the UK in one piece and bearing up through the festive period OK. Rather too much alcohol on a daily basis but I've been coping with the excessive Xmas eating happily :) Training not derailed too badly despite the 48 hours of travelling last week and sudden shock of cold British weather, though local pool closures have hampered the swim volume a bit. Most disturbingly my tan seems to have disappeared far too rapidly!

Only 4 weeks to Epic NZ, so trying to keep on track, though there's not much chance of many bonus overdistance rides pre-Epic given the shortage of daylight hours here! Its been dark by 4pm! (plus I'm sticking to the schedule, coach!)

Happy New Year!

Time to head home

I'm heading home for tomorrow for 4 weeks... its going to be a shock to the system. Apparently its around 3 degrees C in London at the moment - compared to here where its mid 20s/low 30s with as much sunlight as you could ask for. At least it will feel festive!

Ending the training period here on a high - had an awesome day out yesterday - usually a rest day, monday was actually a big day's training this week as the fligths on wednesday and thursday mess up the schedule, and so I am trying to salvage as decent a week as possible around two days in a plane and imminent jet lag when I get home. Strangely, am looking forward to a few long runs in the cold...

The new place on Shannon Avenue has been hilarious -living with a bunch of triathlon and surfing nuts is great fun! Must leave my wife-beater and filthy language in Oz though (but the tan is coming with me)...

See you in the UK

Toby

Last week in Oz

Just a week and a half left in Oz before I head home for Xmas. I got to move out of my trailer today (thanks very much to local celebrity Leanne and co.) and enjoying my rest day catching up on emails, sorting flights, accommodation, races etc... Also watched What It Takes, and feeling very motivated. Luckily its the day off so no worries about me heading out of the door and smacking myself silly on the roads. Just a brief swim later and that's me done for the day.

Beasties in Oz

Photo as promised of William (above) who turned 2 this week.

Just finished week 4 of the new schedule. Settled into it and finding that the 'on' button for the pace intervals is coming a little more easily on the run and the bike. Weather's been beautiful - hot and sunny, with windy days to keep some of the rides interesting. Found a couple of good swim squads who are making hitting 20km a week in the pool fairly easy (and sociable!) - one of the squads seems to hit 5 km no problems, though the wednesday session after typically a 4-5 hour ride and 2 hour run finds me a little flat!!!

I'm staying in a caravan park round the corner from the pools and track, on the river which has kilometer markers along both bank paths, and - essentially - only 500m from a large supermarket :) Its perfect. Except for the MASSIVE spider that decided it wanted to live between the front door and the fly screen yesterday. Luckily it has now relocated - to where I do not care. I was reading in the local paper about a brown python (or something like that) found in someone's back yard in Victoria - over 2m long - I now eye large sticks on the road with suspicion, and at the open water swim yesterday there seemed to be a lot of chat about great whites... I think I prefer to live in ignorance.

Toby

Oz week one

G'day! Arrived thursday morning, but jet lag had the best of me for a couple of days. Its still spring here, so weather's a little variable - but yesterday was a cracker at 29 degs - took advantage with a beautiful ride out to Geelong. Liz and Ian (and 2 year old William) are off camping for the weekend so I could recover from jet lag without feeling too antisocial. Am staying at their place in Williamstown - a suburb of Melbourne. The town itself is on a peninsula, so there's lot of seafront, boat jetties, nature reserves etc to run through (and no hills!). Just getting ready to head off for a run down the coast to Altona and back. The week's been a bit of a right off for decent training, but starting the new regime tomorrow (again - I tried to start it this week but flying half way round the world wrote off more time than I'd anticipated!) so no worries.